


soul sucker (dust city diner special)

by sun_dog



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-08 23:10:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3226994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sun_dog/pseuds/sun_dog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anyone who wants to burn, burns. Eat it piece by piece like blackberry guts on your fingertips. Soul sucker. Good times. No citrus allowed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	soul sucker (dust city diner special)

His heart was a signal fire. 

Anyone who wants to burn, burns. Eat it piece by piece like blackberry guts on your fingertips. Soul sucker. Good times. No citrus allowed.

(Cloud nine exclusive). Meet at paradise at mine o’clock. RSVP only. 

That’s what he said. That’s how he took the tips of his brown fingers and tugged on his collar, fingerprints everywhere. A living crime scene. Everything about him indecent and contrary, like noise in a museum – as if the pictures didn’t scream loud enough. 

(The vagina pictures, or doors, or whatever they were. You always had artistic vision, but yours was the blind kind, you had braille and screw ups and mediocre reception).

That was the thing, though. In the desert it’s easy to tell when you’re being loud. It’s easy to be a bastard because the whole world isn’t listening, you might as well be talking to padded walls. You might as well be making anonymous internet comments. Suck up all the data on your shitty plan, no roll over minutes. Desert gods stuck you in a place with no service. But whether god wears a yellow jumpsuit or a white robe, you were never quite sure. Man is supposed to be made in his image, right? Yellow jumpsuit, then— gotta be.

So, if the gods make crystal like you, then you are the cloudy sixty-four percent stuff. It was always good enough. It was good enough before he came along and stepped on the ice like a claw-footed summer, not just cracking it, but melting it away completely. You felt it drain out of you the first time you tasted it – you felt yourself melt for him.

Sure, you were sixty-four, but he— he has always been at ninety-nine. Too close to divine, too close to apocalyptic. The perfect batch, disastrous shit. You know that now.

And it’s okay to finally whisper the words, it’s okay to admit it.

In the desert you can say whatever you want. There is no mask, there are no sunglasses, there is only empty pizza boxes and temperatures that drop in the night. There is straight dirty teeth, like dust got in them. Like someone brushed them up from fossil beds, nicotine miracles. Like you’ve been smiling for way too long without saying anything at all.

And there’s huge stars pinched into the sky like noserings and one big white moon, like a blind eye, like a pearl cap screwed onto a giant molar filled with craters. 

Anyway, that’s what it seemed like.

Green smoke-filled nights and days that burned in shades of amarillo. 

Him always saying, _Remember the catalytic conversation rate_ , as if that meant anything to you at all. As if you hadn’t been sucking on a long ass glass straw full of crystal persuasion fifteen minutes before. But you nod, alright alright. As if you’d known all along. As if you were the one teaching him something.

_Ha._

It seems honest. That’s what you go with most of the time. It’s not like there’s a rule book to any of this. Make meth, take notes, meet Skinny for hit in the parking lot off Central where you got your first blowjob (late, at seventeen, but you’ve always been a late bloomer), make meth again. No, not make, _cook_.

You’ve always been nothing, no change, no tax. Just tired and grey in between all the colors and the mimicry. But you’re good at this. Good at taking orders. Good at watching and you don’t even know it. Good at making sure you say _cook_ , not make. Because there is a difference that comes naturally to you.

Even he doesn’t know that. Even he can’t see it with his magnifying glass eyes, like a frog saurian and dead, like he’s never been good at seeing anything but what he can remember. Like he’s always been a fucking four-eyed loser.

He says, _Give me the Erlenmeyer flask_ , and you have no idea what the fuck he is talking about. But you guess, you guess and you hand him that fucking Er-len-mucker flask like a goddamn _boss_ , like you are on pure fucking fire bitch, like there is nothing you have ever done _but_ , in your entire squeaky twerped-out little life.

And you’re right. You give him the right thing. Out of a million little glass whatevertheyares, you’re _right_.

He keeps working like it’s nothing, murmuring to himself under patchy whiskers, and you marvel for a second. 

It’s not like you pictured. Maybe you’re good at this and bad at something else (estimating y-o-u-r-s-e-l-f you hear it in Badger’s voice, you don’t know why, but the idea flits across your mind for a static second, a reception coming in and out and unverified). You catch your reflection, the colored garble of your thin face in the glass and think, _did that bitch like I paid for it; Erlenmeyer fuck you_.

Everything is good for the rest of the day. In fact, it’s fucking fantastic.

He doesn’t even notice the next six times you screw up, at least not enough to merit any sort of lecture. It’s like you were born to do the right fucking thing one glorious revelatory time, and then screw up six more things but _nobody fucking notices_. And it’s beautiful.

It’s all a gorgeous kind of blur when you think back on it. Rotten colors that looked like new and fogged up ventilator glass. Twisted up star light eking through the window in the RV like it was fucked up too, like this whole experience ruined the world into some kind of freaky laser tag rave show. Walking outside into the sun made your eyes hurt, walking outside into the sun made your heart sag.

That’s when the money came in. 

It wasn’t a stretch to say you pocketed the first five hundred dollars, just like you blew his seven grand in that strip joint. Twirly tits and jacked up drinks and top shelf liquor. It was easy to say fuck you back then, but it seems like you’ve gotten worse at it.

Grown or devolved or survived, you can’t tell which is which anymore. 

As if it matters, as if he doesn’t make all the rules and say someone forced them upon him. That’s how the law always worked though, wasn’t it. Maybe that’s one big ugly picture of human nature made with cheap fucking acrylics, staring you in the fucking face, saying MOM AND DAD WILL THINK ART SCHOOL IS ONE BIG FUCKING JOKE, JUST LIKE Y O U.

Yeah, that’s it. 

Desert rules only. That’s how everything is played. Dried up and frozen out and asking you how much do you want it, because enlightenment is outside, in between the sand and the sky, floating around, free but complicated.

He knows the code. He says he’ll teach it to you, but you’ve never been good at like, school or anything. 

He says it’s not like that. It’s an _art_ , in time. Even he believes that. He calls himself an artist and that’s when you get on the train. Or at least, that’s when you get the ticket punched. You’ve been on this goddamn ride for a lifetime now. You’ve lived and died, you ate up all the pineapple yellow forgeries and spit them out pretty and blue.

 _I would too_ , he says. But he has no idea what you’re thinking. Or does he?

Look, don’t be so paranoid about it. 

That’s when you laugh, under your breath, eyes lingering on him like he’s a crocodile, dragging himself across mud. He’s got scales and lines and sensors, shit like the nature shows say. You decide he’s a crocodile, with all his tears and his barrel roll of death.

 _Give me something real_ , you threaten, you squeeze his shoulders like the universe squeezing together all matter, like some big bang Stephen Hawking shit on at three AM that you never, ever should have watched, and you never, ever should have touched those mushrooms. But you did.

He looks back and forth at your eyes, as if deciding which one to believe, confusing you. Making you think twice about yourself. _R e a l_ , he repeats. The world is strange on his tongue as if speaking is some sort of grand imposition, as if he decided language doesn’t count anymore. Like he got stupid in it. But he’s too damn smart to get stupid so you don’t know what’s up. 

_Okay_ , he breathes, in and out, like a locomotive, like a coal-smacked train with top hat smoke and a murderous industrial beat. You want real? it comes out like a dragon in one of those Chinese parades, slithers, ugly and beautiful and foreign. All you know about Chinese is take-out.

_You want real?_

You’re not sure if you do anymore. 

He churns along, like some sort of tectonic force that has been in the works for hundreds of thousands of years and shit, he hacks like the moon hitting its forehead on space. 

_Reality is relative_. 

As if that is some kind of answer. This is cool and cucumber. This is the arrow that points to sunstroke. Wear SPF or risk ugly details, risk bitter lemons – that is something you keep hearing over and over in your head. The amalgamation of too many commercials listened to while unconscious. 

_Fine_ , you say, _fine_ , spitting out that idea like it tasted bad, nasty resin in the bong. The night is cold. There are needles in your shoe, cactus needles (you haven’t gotten that bad yet). _Then give me something relative, give me something rele-vant, bi-tch_. 

It’s good that you thought of two words that use the same prefix. It makes you smarter, more intellectually put together. And you didn’t even try. It came natural like the other thing. It came natural like you’re a fucking surfer or something. He might be the ocean, rotten and eternal and blue, but you can ride the damn waves like a pro. You’re the King of the Fucking Sea. It’s _Captain Cook_ for a reason, bitch. Pufferfish or blow or coke or eels. It doesn’t matter, throw them all at you, you’re like a harpoon. You’re like something electric, if only you could find the switch. Yeah.

He mulls it over, suddenly breaks eye contact and watches the neon dachshund in the distance. Decides you are both hungry. He buys like three million things, unwraps everything, eats quietly until you’re just staring at him, just waiting, wondering if he even forgot, or maybe if it’s some sick-guy thing, you’re not sure anymore. You don’t even know this territory (yes you do). You’ve never met anyone like this (no you haven’t). He eats so meticulously, but he eats so much, so all consuming, so endless like the sky on its worst days.

 _Something relevant_ , he says finally, and it’s like you wake up from one of his fucking lectures, like the bell rang and it’s time to escape. Ring-a-ling-ling-bitch. He’s a blow horn. _You are remarkable_. 

You stare, huge eyes like the silver dollars in your dad’s office collection. Blue rims and crystal cold black pits, breathing out winter and clarity. _What_.

 _It’s remarkable the initiative you’ve shown_ , he says, like he’s filling out a report card, not like he’s dealing a deck of cards. _I’m really impressed with the speed with which you’ve picked up the requisite skills and technical information_.

You choke for half a second, the words coming out like a question. _Like. Thanks. Or whatever?_ too high-pitched on the end like you inhaled something weird, eyebrows mangled.

You finally start to eat although he’s left practically nothing. He pushes you some leftover fries and it was nice of him, seeing as he eats like a tractor trailer. (He pukes it all up though, nasty, and he does it every day on the dot, like even his body’s sick of him, says fucking _give up already bro_ ).

He looks so old and shit with the neon lights in the dry clay cracks of his face, rioting all over him, red and orange like the blood under his skin come to the surface. Do crocodiles even have blood – shit if you know, they didn’t mention that in the TV show. They didn’t mention if it was blue or red or green. They didn’t mention him lit up in violent neon, hot dog wrappers and empty paper cups, and the cold zip to the air like you accidentally clipped your skin between a button.

It’s ten solid minutes before he gets up to go home. You absently say, _drive safe_ , you mean it enough but it’s not like he said goodbye or anything. It’s not like you exchanged the usual precursor pleasantries. You say it like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

He turns from his old guy car as you tug down your cap with your whole palm.

 _See you in hell_ , he says nicely.

And you blink sharply, stand up, _what the fucking h e l l Mr White_.

He looks so confused, eyes narrowing. _See you in the morning?_ he repeats, no real understanding of your outburst.

Your heart is beating so fucking fast, and you look around. 

Your breath is cold in your throat and it hurts.

 _Right_ , you duck your head, ashamed of yourself. _Right_.

 _See you in the AM, Mr White._

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

That’s how it starts. This is how it ends.

There is a motel off the 66 – the lame ass 66 all the old tourists take to in their fancy ’57 Chevys and three-zillion dollar Coup de Villes. Places the cops leave be.

It’s the place this guy Sting Ray, as in shoot you through the solar plexus, as in Steve Irwin-style, like, buys and sells.

He has you with a revolver to your temple, and there is chartreuse spit gathered at the corners of his lip, and the room is all yellow like a peach with its innards smudged all over the walls, and two women are laughing in the background high as fuck. They are wearing next to nothing, big long tits everywhere, but your dick is the last thing working right now, you keep thinking _brain come on, brain come o n_. Like it’s something that can be willed into action, like you control the rain in the desert (but it’s never been you).

He says, _wahr ya get dis Blu Devil boi_ , and you don’t know what island he came from but you wish it got hit with like, a tsunami or whatever (no you don’t, no you fucking don’t). (Yes, you fucking do).

You sputter, whine, oh my god oh my god, and look up to the sky (to the filthy chipped plaster ceiling, and you have a moment of life-flashing horror, as if that fucking explains it all), you don’t want to fucking die Mr White, that’s what you’ve said a thousand times, it’s what he promised would never happen, it’s what he trusted you to do. Jesse Jackson, Jesse James, Jesse Team Rocket Rocket, Man of the Streets. Fucking hell. It was all a lie, a piss poor lie, you don’t know shit, you know where they send the guys up river and the Rio’s fucking dry man.

Sting Ray gets pissed, he glances over to the girls and has a sneaking suspicion they are laughing at him, not with him. Fucking whores. Poor girls. Get your lives straightened out. Fuck you.

You feel the ice cold metal at your skin, and you hate the arctic, you hate the cold, you think Alaska would be the death of you.

Mr White comes in from the parking lot and wastes them all. Mr White has a system, three minutes, in and out, otherwise you worry, otherwise you come inspect. You bitched about that rule for weeks, and now all you want to do is bone it.

There are bodies with weird-angled limbs spread across the floor, Mr White has kool-aid crimson blood on his windbreaker.

He holds the gun all fucked up too, like they show on TV, in the way that isn’t applicable to real life and throwback and control – but he looks so solid doing it. Instead it’s like everyone else has been doing it wrong since the dawn of time.

You are too loyal, too fucking struck dead because you pissed your fucking pants, and now there are three dead bodies – _the girls didn’t even do anything!_ you scream, you have no idea why. You think sometimes you just make up the better in people.

 _No, no,_ he chides, so eloquent, so engaged, like a man on a podium, like a main in lapels. _Witnesses. Haven’t you ever seen CSI?_

Your mouth is wide open, and you don’t want to mention the piss in your jeans, and Mr White is dragging you outside, and he looks electric, like a stupid chapel, like a Get-Married-In-Vegas drunk-ass chapel on the strip. Too excited and begging for alimony. _CSI? What are you – are you even ser-ious right now!_ you gasp, you have no idea what you’re saying. 

You have never had less breath, it always seems like you’re scraping by.

 _Are you okay?_ he asks, once you are out in the dark, once the stench of blood is only half there. He smells worse. Like happiness and acid.

 _I’m fine_ , you say, relieved, shocked, tired.

He gives you the strangest look when he turns. _Are you still in possession of the product?_ he repeats, blinking as if he’s not sure you’ve heard him correctly.

Oh, but you did. _Yeah_ , you say. You glare. _Yeah_.

You eventually catch your breath (or you tell yourself you do).

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, that was false pretenses. 

It never ends when you say it ends, does it. 

You don’t know if you’re lying to yourself, and you don’t know if it’s one big game, and you have no idea if you’ve been driving too long and you need to pull over. Road hypnotism. It’s a real thing.

You only know that you’re addicted again. He says _halle-fucking-lujah_ and you praise the good lord of meth and cook up another goddamn batch, because why the hell not right. Why the hell not, you’re a hornet in a yellow jumpsuit and you make a million dollars a week, you could wipe your ass with that money, in fact you did and you know he has too. Shit money.

You add the acid, burn the remainder, account for it in the temperature. You heat up the excess and drain the vestiges. You are a mother fucking Einstein in here and he is the theory of relativity. Energy equals mass at the speed of light (holy mass, take the neon eucharist) – you do speed once in the lab, says it’ll increase productivity. You slip some into his coffee. It works like magic. Magicians and scientists. You meet the quota. You don’t regret it.

He keeps yelling like a toddler, he says, _what was that stuff again_ , his voicebox dismantling the ceiling tiles.

You say, _Five Hour Energy_ , although you’re sweating bullets. You’re sweating an ocean and smiling like a clown in a soon-to-be-dead children’s ward. Too fucking b i g. Too fucking fake. You’re having the time of your life. You love to lie, even though you suck at it.

He spends the entire night running around the lab, complaining about his pulse, hiccupping and laughing hysterically. You think he’s never looked so happy. You think being a junkie was good for something. Mr White needs to chill the fuck out, Mr White needs a trip to the Yukon.

Mr White is high as that lime-green balloon you let go of when you were six as he leans over the distiller, marvels at you, downright marvels at you and says, _you should lend me one of your CDs. H I P- H O P._ He says it like it’s a language made in between energy-drink nebulas, like he’s always lived below the earth. Like he has eaten dirt his whole life.

You pity him, say, _no one listens to CDs anymore, Mr White. Welcome to the 21st century weirdo_.

He waves his hand, dismissing his anachronism. _You should make me a mixtape_.

You laugh for a full ten minutes and he has no idea why.

The batch is perfect, and his smile is as crystal as the drug that’s turned out glass as Tiffany’s.

He says, _great job, Jesse, great round. Perfect_ , he says, the words slipping off his mouth like gold.

Perfect.

 _Tiffany’s_ , you say, grinning stupidly, and he looks at you, stills for second.

You almost backpedal, words already forming around themselves, ready to spill out of you like one of those elastic balls, wrapped over and over each other. But he grins before you get the chance. Eyes crinkling up, jowls getting deeper. _Tiffany’s_ , he repeats. He likes it.

It’s like a smack to the veins, sugar or hammer or worse. 

You were born a junkie, and you’ll die one. 

But there’s something to be said for burning out, for living with something that kills you.

He doesn’t mention Tiffany again, but you know he loves her.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

He pounds on your door at five in the morning. Five in the fucking morning. The stars shake. The hinges are epileptic. He is unrelenting, like the sun itself, rising on you and burning into the drywall. Always decaying.

He is saying something, train-mouthed, crushing air, crushing reason, too fast, too radical. He keeps telling you to open the damn door. He sounds like a garage door screeching open and shut. He sounds like Godzilla.

 _Fucking-A, Godzilla!_ you scream, it’s the most rational thing in the world. _Fuck you, hasn’t Japan has enough_ , you say that last bit to yourself, it comes out strangled. It’s philosophy. It’s deep.

All you hear is muffled rhythm against the cold. 

The blood inside of you is yellow and outraged, rollercoaster-colored, and fruit punch flavored. You feel like a power plant, you feel like the whole world revolves around king you for once.

It was a magic thing, all of this sovereignty in your veins. You’re traveling cross-country, you’re trekking uncharted waters, you’re a pirate and you just struck a treasure chest. You’re outlaw enough and responsibilities can go fuck themselves.

It’s all great, Captain Cook and his white-boy drug name and his X-marks the spot track marks. Metal and glimmering ocean in this boneyard desert town, and paradise so close you can taste it.

You are burning up another, heating up the spoon, when a sound like rocketfuel startles you, blooming into merciless mushrooms. 

For a split second you are grateful for the fire, anything to blow away all this dust. For a second you are not you. You’re in your body but you are not you. You’re the you that’s younger, that’s greener, that never dreamed of hard drugs and death wishes, spread out like pretty paper snowflakes.

And there he is, stepping out from the smoke, all dressed in black and covered up with a scarf, like tentacles hanging around his neck (a noose would be tighter, meaner). He’s like the kraken, and fuck rockets. Fuck touchdown. He jumps on you, strangles you and you must fight like hell to get him off. You punch his eye in (always go for the eye, that was the consensus between you and your friends during Shark Week), you go for his trachea, you learned a thing or two on the streets. Other than how to stuff your jacket full of newspaper to keep you warm. Other than that.

He’s choking and hacking and he doesn’t give up. Fingers laces around your throat, pulling up the belt around your arm like a giant black plume of ink. Some sort of evil octopus. The blackness consumes you quick with this dope, any change of vibe and it’s all downhill, in a second you’re cold as an icebox and as hungry as one too. Everything is a whirlpool, and you’re drowning. 

He is screaming, or at least you think so, the way it all swirls together like a Halloween pinwheel—sound and sight and senses. He’s trashing your place and you think you’re screaming, _what the hell are you evening d o i n g man_ , but you’re really murmuring in a high-pitched tone, keening on the coverlet like a dying cat.

In the morning your stash is gone. You have no idea how the H was discovered, but that’s gone too.

You trudged through the trash covered floor to the kitchen; it’s closer to one than noon.

You step on him getting there.

It’s just then you remember the garbled words, _not leaving until I know you wake up_.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Give him a grand for every time you fucked him over. No seriously, your junkie ass is worse than Internet Explorer, you’re so full of virus, so undependable. 

_Fuck, Mr White_ , you complain, but he’s not listening.

He’s mixing phosphorous-something with nitrogen-something else.

 _Mr White, I can’t do this all night man_.

He turns to you a moment later, looks at you, looks through you, like he is looking through a flask, through some beaker and attempting to discern the properties of the contents within. (Does that make you more important, or less?)

_What?_

_You know, I have plans_ , you say, you wince. You lie because you devised this whole scenario to test him. Yeah, you’re the professor now and he is the… he is the kid in the back of the class who is never paying attention. He is you.

 _Plans?_ The words lift off his tongue like a single engine plane, destined to crash.

_Yeah, like, hangin with the guys and stuff. I still, like, have a life you know._

He looks at you, unreadable.

 _I know_ , he agrees.

You tentatively start to remove your gear, one eye on him like he’s in camouflage. Like he’s a praying mantis and the fact is, you’re not religious at all.

You reach the door when he finally talks.

 _Same time tomorrow_ , he says. 

_Actually_ , you interject, _I have plans tomorrow too_.

He turns, plastic fabric bunching together at his shoulder, dropper suspended aloft. _Oh?_

 _Yeah_ , you answer, stuffing your hands into your basketball-sized pockets. _Me and Skinny, we were gonna game and stuff._

He’s now facing you completely. Eyes scrunched like he’s staring straight into the sun, (straight into reality). _‘Game and stuff’,_ he repeats.

 _Yeah so like, I’ll catch you around_.

He watches you, you are aware of every single movement. You step on the grass carefully. It’s like you don’t blend in.

 _Okay?_ you say it boldly, sarcastically. He finally takes a hold of the coke you brought him, lifting his hand up in surrender.

When you shut the door behind you, you rip at your collar. 

Cough.

You wonder if he did something to the air.

He’s coughing too. 

You hear the cup clatter to the ground.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Three days later you meet up at Denny’s. You are more than pissed, you’re bleeding out frustration, pin cushioned, pinnocioed, porcupined in all directions. You are the pre-WWII Japanese flag, all connected to every single minute thing and hating it. You learn stuff from video games. Usually none of it's applicable.

Sliding into the booth, you expect some sort of threat. Some bared-teeth brunt of salt and vinegar. 

He’s quiet for what feels like centuries, moving around paper sugar and pepper packets in what you guess to be the shapes of molecules or atoms. He looks so old sometimes, so bad at this.

 _Look Jesse_ , and you tense. You lean back in the seat, fingering the gun in your pocket. Your breath is terse, ugly. You feel justified—he stole your stash, you drugged him to find it, fair is fair, except that you didn’t find it, and that he is totally freaking psycho. You figure this is the end. You haven’t been thinking straight since the H, you brought a gun into Denny’s, they're having a two-for-one, there is a bunch of cub scouts across the room, and you brought in a gun. 

_Yeah_ , you say, _what_ , confidence rattling. Never there in the first place. A tin cup full of pennies pretending to be dimes.

 _About the other day in the lab_ , he says, so miniscule. It throws you off, and that’s always the ploy isn’t it.

 _Look, Mr White I had_ —you start to confess, or rationalize or threaten. Whichever sounds best. You’re starting to become convinced the entire kitchen staff is going to waste you, they keep giving one another strange looks, but he holds his hand up.

 _I passed out_ , he admits, eyes shutting. _I’ve been doing that a lot lately_. 

You see the misery in his face, it hangs off his bones like a tattered curtain. His skull protrudes from under his skin. The sorrow there, it’s genuine, you’re sure of it, and your finger loosens on the trigger.

 _N—no,what? Really?_ you feign surprise. _What, Mr White? That, like, sucks. How long were you out?_

 _Hours_ , he answers airily. Your adrenaline rips under your casing like little horned beetles chewing their way up through skin.

 _Look, let’s not worry about it_ , he instructs in his best teacher voice, his best covering-up a lie voice. _It’ll only slow things down. I just thought. Well. I just thought you should know, that’s all. You being my. You being my partner. I'm sorry._

The last words shine like ganache.

You stare at him, all your misdeeds shriveled up by this new shiny alibi. Your eyes are rung with concern, you nod, assuring him. _Yeah. Yeah, Mr White. It's cool._

You give him a pat on the arm, distant but close. But there is an honestly in your motions you didn’t feel that night in the lab.

He smiles, tightly. Vulnerable. He glances out the window. His glasses reflect the clouds, patched into the lenses like daubs of paint.

In a moment the waitress comes by, hip adjacent to the table with a giant tray of food.

 _I hope you don’t mind_ , he says, _I took the liberty of ordering for us before you got here. Hungry_ , he shrugs with upturned lips, as if in apology.

 _Yeah_ , you nod, _ha, whatever, it’s cool_.

You're smiling now too.

The waitress sets down your food and the drinks. He slides the shining brick red can of Coke to you with one outstretched finger. Your blood freezes up into your throat, into your eyeballs. It’s blisteringly cold, aluminum and indestructible.

 _Enjoy_ , he smiles. 

Your eyes haven’t left him, they twitch in instinctual preservation. You choke out a breathless laugh, dry and paint-chipped. He has dug into the pancakes, is totally barbaric in his usage of syrup. There is a bright purple and yellowed bruise oozing up to the surface of his skin above his eyebrow.

You are afraid of a can of Coke.

In that moment you think that maybe you are both sick.


End file.
